


Spring in Paris

by synchronysymphony



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, M/M, anyway this is very sad, i was sad while i wrote it and i'm sad now, nabokov and hugo are sad mates now, spring in fialta is probs one of my favorite nabokov short stories tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 17:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6916660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synchronysymphony/pseuds/synchronysymphony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ten-year love story, from first to last kiss.<br/>(Spring in Fialta/Les Miserables crossover with Nina Enjolras and Victor Grantaire)<br/>oh yeah by the way you don't need to know anything about nabokov for this lmao it's just the Effect u feel</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring in Paris

**Author's Note:**

> tw: I went along with Nabokov's story for this, so when they first meet, Enjolras is 16. It's only like one line though, so just be warned. Also, they have sex, but it's really not described at all. And finally, since it's Nabokov, and Nina does die, the end is kinda ??? so don't be sad pls

It was spring when they first met. Not the golden haze of early mornings and late afternoons, or the fresh, breathless, floral fantasy that leaves everyone half in love, but a cold, drizzly patch of mist, the kind that paints the streets gray and the trees as black spires under the clouds. Most people chose to stay indoors that season, unwilling to brave the chill and damp even for the promise of other firesides and other entertainments. Maybe that was why they met in the first place– too much warmth can be suffocating, and for young people of restless temperament, it only makes sense to seek relief from comfort outdoors. 

Grantaire wasn’t normally one for the woods. He had spent more than enough time there during his lycée days, when his friends and classmates had convinced him to leave his canvases for greener fields and roam with them through all the delights that nature had to offer. But after one particularly boring dinner with a set of his dullest and least bearable cousins, he’d decided to take the air. Maybe it was destiny that prompted this; maybe just blind luck. He never knew, even afterwards, what possessed him to amble out of the house that evening, to meet his fate under the dripping sky.

He was walking through the edge of the forest, weaving his way between the few poor hyacinth flowers that struggled to bloom in the underbrush, looking for– what, exactly? If it was inspiration he needed, he could find all he needed within his own head. And if it was peace that he searched for, there were better places to find it than the wet, musky greenery of the wood. Truth to be told, he didn’t know, and if anyone had asked him why he kept poking through the shrubbery so persistently, he wouldn’t have been able to give an answer. He knew he was looking for something, but what, he wouldn’t know until he found it.

What– or who. He’d thought himself alone, hadn’t expected to see anyone else out on such a dreary evening, so it came as a shock to glance casually behind a tree only to see someone there already, staring at him with wide, dewy eyes. 

At first, he was inclined to think this was another figment of his imagination, because he had never seen anyone so lovely as the angelic figure before him, but he quickly thought better of it. No one of the likes of him could ever imagine such a vision. Golden curls framed a pearl-shell face, cadmium eyes glowed uncertainly above a perfect Grecian nose, and above the softly dimpled chin, the delicate rosebud mouth pouted at him, lips half-parted in surprise. All that was missing was a halo; Grantaire half fancied he saw a pair of wings sticking out behind the rough bark of the tree. Thinking it was a girl, he was halfway into a bow when the apparition moved out from behind the tree, revealing a slight form in a men’s frock coat. 

“Good evening.”

Grantaire had never felt so clumsy before. He finished his bow and straightened up, all knowledge gone. How could a man talk to an angel? He murmured some pleasantry, painfully thankful that his mouth could work without aid of his brain. 

The young man (boy, really– he couldn’t have been more than sixteen) smiled at him then, a sweet, bewitching little burst, and came closer without a hint of hesitation. 

“What are you doing out on such a night?”

“I could ask you the same question.” Grantaire let his gaze trail up and down the slender figure before him. “Don’t you know that dangerous beasts roam these woods?”

“I can see that they do.” The young man’s voice was playful now. He took a step closer, close enough now that he had he reached out, he could have grasped Grantaire’s hand. “Is that why you’re out here, then, to protect us all from the shadows?”

“The shadows of the mind, perhaps.” Grantaire paused, waiting to see if the young man was impressed by his lofty sentiments, but he didn’t seem to be, so there was no choice but to go on. “I am an artist,” he explained, as if that was all there was to it. “I am looking for an ideal.”

The young man brightened, a genuine smile replacing the coy one of a second ago. “Is that right? I, too, am looking for an ideal. Is your quest so pure that you would not tell a stranger about it?”

“Believe me, I lead no pure quests.”

“Then tell me.”

There was a backbone of demand in the request, the imperiousness of a boy who was used to being spoiled by those around him, and who laid everyone he met under his charming enchantment. Already, Grantaire could feel himself falling under the same spell– he could deny this young princeling nothing.

“I am in search of something to believe in,” he said.

“Belief?” The young man shook his head slightly, lips pouted again. “But that’s the easiest thing in the world!”

“Not in my world. I see nothing, and affirm nothing. All I know to be true are love and liberty.”

“Love and liberty– those are not nothing. Countless have died for those same ideals.”

“And so would I, if there was only a cause that would make them true.”

The young man frowned in dainty puzzlement. “But you said yourself that you take them as truth, inherently so.”

“Yes, in theory. But as to whether or not they are ideals that can be borne out in the real world– borne out purely, I mean– that is something I have yet to see.”

“You Platonic types are so immaterial.” The young man sighed, running a hand through his luscious mane of hair. “Look around you. Can you not see evidence of these ideals you espouse in everything before you? Maybe we will never get to the perfect essence of the thing, maybe we will never find the core of what we seek. But does that matter? We have enough– no, more than enough already. You seek the pure forms of love and liberty, you say. Very well. But what is the pure form? Does it matter? I see these ideals every day, in the smallest actions of those around me. I see them everywhere I go. And the world is not yet free, no, but that does not mean there is no hope. As I see it, the more we gain, the further we go. And every gain is as important as any other. So what if we never find that perfect essence? I do not believe that we are lost because of this. We will continue to go on, and we will continue to grow better and better. The world is not so bad now, and in the future, it will be truly a thing of beauty. Just wait. Fight with me, and wait. You will see the sun rise.”

Grantaire shook his head. He wanted to say something, to debate this, but in truth, he was floored. In his own circle of carefully cynical friends, he had never met anyone who burned so fiercely before. The little golden snippet before him had been transformed from a delicate wood-nymph to a live flame, a torch in the dark, passion in human form. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand, not afraid of breaking the young man anymore, but rather afraid of burning himself. Yet, he had to touch to see for himself if he was real, or just some sort of illusory fiction, somehow more real than reality itself.

“May I take your hand?” he asked.

The words had hardly left his mouth when the young man’s fingers closed on his, surprisingly strong under their softness. 

“Are we not doing this backwards?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his sweet, light voice. “Will you not tell me your name?”

“I am Grantaire.”

“Grantaire.” The young man nodded gravely. “It is a lovely name. You may call me Enjolras,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Grantaire lifted the delicate hand to his lips and pressed a chaste kiss to the back. “Enchanté.”

Enjolras looked up through his lashes, slow and languorous, and for a second, Grantaire thought he would tie the threads between them, but then he blushed, schooled his face into a more proper one, and spoke in a purposefully bright tone.

“So, Grantaire. Have I convinced you yet that there is belief to be found in this world?”

“Perhaps.” Grantaire smiled at him over their joined hands. “Insofar as you belong to this world, then yes.”

Enjolras’s already-pink cheeks darkened half a shade more. “Please. I am nothing but of this world.”

“You are of heaven.”

“You flatter.”

“I believe.”

Enjolras smiled, then, boyish, and almost shy. Grantaire had no doubt that the hyacinth would not hesitate to bloom now after seeing him. He stepped right up against Enjolras, clasping him close with his free hand. 

“May I?”

Enjolras’s breath caught ever so slightly in his throat. His eyes were blown glass. “Please.”

Grantaire bent to capture the coraline lips with his own, and Enjolras sighed and allowed him all. Their kiss was the meeting of minds.

—

They met barely half a year later, at a party in Vienna. Grantaire had been restless all evening, looking for something that he couldn’t quite name. Drinks couldn’t sway him, and idle chatter seemed to scratch at his very skin. He had almost decided to leave and go back to his loneliness for the night, if only to get away from the itchy and unendurable vibrancy, when a sweet, familiar voice called out his name.

“Grantaire! Over here!”

It couldn’t be. It was impossible. Fate would not let him step twice into this stream. Still, he couldn’t help but look in the direction that the voice had come, expecting nothing but disappointment. After all, this same voice had haunted his dreams for months now; was it so far-fetched that it would now begin to visit him in his waking hours as well?

“Grantaire!”

There was nothing else to be done. He followed the voice, obedient as to a command, and found himself in a partly occluded alcove by the balcony. There, in the midst of a group of crow-like gentlemen, stood the angel himself, glowing like the locus of a painting from the old academy. Upon seeing Grantaire, he smiled, suddenly radiant, casually placed his glass of wine in the hand of the man next to him, and came bounding forward to grasp Grantaire’s hands in his own.

“I knew it was you.”

For the second time, Grantaire was left speechless. He could hardly believe that this was happening, that he’d been allowed to find him again. He mutely pressed Enjolras’s hands, trying to express through touch what he could not through words. Enjolras, seeming to understand, merely smiled again, closer and more tender this time, and tugged him forward.

“Come, let me introduce you.”

Grantaire willingly let himself be pulled into the knot of dark-suited men. If this was an opening into Enjolras’s world, then he was all to eager to enter. He allowed himself to be introduced, making mechanically witty pleasantries that left the strangers wheezing (not for nothing was he known as the life of every society fête), but his attention never strayed far from the young man beside him. For his part, Enjolras integrated himself back into the conversation fluidly, brilliant and buoyant as Grantaire knew he would be, but he never let go of Grantaire’s hand. They spent the rest of the evening in this way, mingling where they would, but never once leaving each other’s side.

Enjolras, Grantaire learned, was an orphan, left with no one and nothing in the world but a surfeit of money and an overabundance of charm. Having escaped early from his boarding school in Paris, he was now making his way across the continent, stirring hearts, inciting rebellion, and attempting to create a network of like-minded individuals who would (presumably) help him to overthrow the government one day. Privately, he confessed to Grantaire that he wasn’t having the best of luck in finding these potential dissidents, since most people would only listen to what he had to say so far as it led them to his bedroom, but, as he had already demonstrated, he was unboundedly optimistic, and he refused to stop trying. Grantaire was still unconvinced of the mission as a whole, but he believed in Enjolras as he had never believed in anything, and he found that not even his guarded pretensions at skepticism could dull the charge. 

Not that Grantaire would ever want to. He had never met anyone like Enjolras, never seen someone imbued with such dual-edged passion and grace. Hell-raiser, fire-brand, radical, yes, but also strangely limpid and elegant. He dripped with virtue in one smile, and breathed coquettishness with the next. Godling; angel. Grantaire knew he could never describe him, could never even try. He was transfixed. Everything seemed to narrow down to a razor-thin point, sharp and clear as wit itself. It was as if there was too much air all of a sudden; he couldn’t take it in fast enough, couldn’t take in enough at all, and he had never felt so alive. 

Everything was give and take between them. Enjolras never fell for the bromides that dazzled Grantaire’s other listeners, but at the subtlest moment, he would interject a crisp-edged comment that would change the whole pattern of the conversation. In his turn, Grantaire would interpolate with a penetrating remark of his own, and Enjolras would look up at him, wide-eyed with wonder and delight. Grantaire, so used to isolation in his own too-gifted mind, now had to make room for an equal, and he found that he could never again be happy alone. Enjolras clearly felt the same. Later that night, he gave himself completely to Grantaire, sharing unguardedly his mind, his bed– and his heart.

—

Months apart, cities apart, across water, walls, and customs, Grantaire and Enjolras continued to meet. Some meetings were unexpected (a chance collision at a cafe, a dropped program at the opera); some were more deliberate. Grantaire was the first to be invited to Enjolras’s wedding, a union of convenience with the fiery heiress of the Thenardier family. Enjolras and Eponine had no romantic feelings for each other, but they got on very well otherwise, and were quite content to share all the benefits of marriage with none of the costs. Bright and opinionated, Eponine provided a convincing enough counterpart to Enjolras that no one questioned her lack of devotion to her betrothed. She and Grantaire took to each other immediately, and within hours of knowing each other, she had already introduced him to her mistress, a chestnut-haired beauty with a smile like blooming violets. Grantaire stayed with the newlyweds until people began to talk, and if he and Enjolras shared a bedroom while Eponine and Cosette took the other, well, no one had to know.

Time stretched on, and though Grantaire often spent months at a stretch without seeing his beloved, he knew he could always look forward to the melodious days and blissful nights that fate looked forward to giving them. They sent each other letters in the times they were apart; Enjolras had settled down in Paris, and while Grantaire still roamed, he now had a permanent address of his own in Prague, where he could look forward to receiving the sparkling missives that Enjolras (and, more often than not, Eponine and Cosette) would send him. 

He was working now, gainfully employed as the go-to artist of the upper class, but not too busy to embark on a project of his own. The great artistic endeavor of the era– he was determined to make something that would be remembered afterwards, a watermark around which time could converge. 

“What should my first subject be?” he wrote to Enjolras, after three months of spoiled canvases and scratched charcoal.

“Verse, wildflowers, and foreign currency,” Enjolras wrote back. “Those are things which captivate humanity.”

“They captivate you,” replied Grantaire, more than a little amused.

“Yes,” came Enjolras’s next letter. “But am I not part of humanity?”

Grantaire sometimes forgot that he was. Even now, even having let himself be known in all the most intimate of ways, he still sometimes seemed too ethereal, too ephemeral to be real. Young though he was, he never seemed to age, retaining the fresh-faced beauty and idealistic optimism of youth. Often, this would lead to people dismissing his endeavors, much to his exasperation, but Grantaire was always quick to soothe him, reassuring him that he had all the time in the world to continue his efforts, and effect the change of which he was so confident. They were a good pair, Enjolras and Grantaire, the jaded artist and the bright-eyed child of society, each fueling and checking in equal part the unworldly dreams of the other.

—

Fate has a sense of humor that people do not understand. They call her capricious, and maybe she does appear so, but her whims are not asserted by any intent to harm. Time and ebb must flow on, and fate must play her part as she has and will forever.

At least, this was what Grantaire told himself when he stumbled out of his hotel in Yalta, directly into the path of Enjolras. As luck would have it, it was spring, ten years to the day after their first meeting, though neither of them knew it at the time. They took one look at each other and began to laugh, clasping hands supporting each other above the creaky cobblestones.

“Grantaire, what are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here, my dear? Have you been following me?”

“Would you know it if I did?”

Still laughing, still tangled together, they made their way down the street, eyes only on each other. How much had changed in ten years– Grantaire was no longer young, and Enjolras was no longer a carefree flirt, but still, they fit together easily as two halves of a whole.

They spent the whole day alone, content to merely stay in each other’s company, watching the sun gallop across the sky. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes they felt no need to, but always, always they stayed close, drinking in the warmth that they could only find together. 

It was twilight, velvet, purple, fragrant with hyacinth, and Grantaire led Enjolras to an abandoned garden above the ocean to watch the sun set. They were holding hands again, not for any need of reassurance, but solely for the happiness of being so connected. Grantaire thought he had never been happier than he was in this moment. He hadn’t expected to see Enjolras, but this only made their reunion all the sweeter. Playfully, he plucked a flower from a nearby bush and tucked it into Enjolras’s honey-gold curls. Enjolras smiled up at him, enchanting as always, and he felt something give in his heart.

“Enjolras,” he said. “If I say something, will you listen?”

Enjolras squeezed his hand. “When do I not?”

Grantaire could come up with countless examples when he did not, but he decided not to iterate them. This was more important. He was quiet for a second, thinking of the words, while Enjolras continued to look at him expectantly. Then, feeling that he had waited both too long and not long enough, he spoke.

“I love you.”

Enjolras started in surprise, but Grantaire shushed him and kept going.

“I love you more than any poet could sing, more than any opiate could dream. You put stars in the daytime, and the sun in the night. If you merely called, the moon would come down and settle in the palm of your hand. Long ago, I loved you with hope; now I love you with trust. You’re fire and ice and sunshine and rain, lyric and melody, earth and sky. You’re the whisper in my heart at night, and all the words that dreamers wish they had the courage to say. I love you– what else can I say? You will forever be the part of my soul that lives away from my body (though, only sometimes). When night comes, I will be with you, and when morning dawns, I will still be here. There’s no need to speak, my darling, not if you don’t wish it. I merely had to tell you. I love you, and I always will.”

Enjolras didn’t say a word, but almost before Grantaire had finished speaking, he was standing on his tiptoes for a fierce kiss. There were tears sliding down his face by the time he pulled away. Grantaire knew they were tears of happiness, not disgust or anger, so he touched a soft kiss to Enjolras’s forehead before continuing.

“I’m getting older, and soon it’ll be time for me to stop roaming. I have my house in Prague, but… what would you say if I came to live in Paris? I could take a respectable place across town, and see you and your wife and her mistress every day. I no longer wish to be apart from you.”

Enjolras smiled at this, just a hint of his old playfulness shining through.

“Why, Monsieur Grantaire,” he said slowly. “It sounds to me as if you are proposing.”

“And if I am?”

“Then I would wonder why it took you so long.”

He kissed Grantaire again, slower and sweeter this time, all the gentleness of the hyacinth on his lips. Grantaire held him close, knowing that as long as he lived, he would never let this moment go. They were deepening the kiss, falling more meltingly into each other, when nearby, a car horn sounded, dragging them out of their reverie.

“There you are!”

Reluctantly, Grantaire let go of Enjolras and turned to see Eponine and Cosette waving at them from behind the dashboard of their car. They were both flushed and grinning, and Cosette’s collar was undone. 

“Sorry to bother you,” Eponine went on, looking genuinely apologetic. “I tried to give you as much time as I could. But we were due at dinner an hour ago.”

“Oh my.” Enjolras shot a sultry, sideways smile at Grantaire. “You steal my heart, and my time, too. How dare you, sir?”

Grantaire took his hand and pulled him close once more. “May I steal a kiss, then, while I’m in the business of theft?”

“Please.”

There wasn’t enough time in the world to kiss Enjolras, especially when they were both men of society with evening obligations. Regretfully, slowly, Enjolras pulled away, squeezing Grantaire’s hand once more before stepping into the car.

“You could come with us,” he said. “Make our dinner that much more enjoyable.”

Grantaire shook his head. “If only I could.”

He was expected at the artists’ club that evening. Probably, he was already late, but that didn’t matter. He waved with all his strength as Eponine revved the engine and drove away.

“Goodbye, angel,” he called. “Don’t leave me waiting too long!”

Enjolras smiled and blew a kiss his way, just in time to see Grantaire catch it before he was gone. Grantaire smiled to himself and stood for a minute, just watching the sun set over the ocean. He could see now, clearer than ever, the beauty in the rounded mossy stones at his feet, and the dying sun sparkling over the sea, and the still-warm wall crumbling at his back. Even the broken shards of glass on the ground, ghosts of an ancient party, gleamed with their own pale fire. Beautiful– it was all beautiful. Life imbued artistry on great and small alike, and finally, finally, Grantaire thought he understood.

—

How commonplace death is, how drab, how crude. Unfailingly, it comes between everything beautiful and good, tripping over its feet in a supreme, unfounded effort to make itself known. Life never takes notice of death, and death, bitter and coarse, must be content to manifest itself in cold rooms and brief newspaper articles that clinically detail the events of car crashes with only one victim, mortal in spite of all evidence to the contrary. How banal, how blandly unfortunate, how…

_How?_

It was spring in Paris, and Grantaire placed one last hyacinth blossom on Enjolras’s grave.

**Author's Note:**

> So the idea that I had that didn't make it in here very well was that this is the first chapter, and the second chapter would be an Ultima Thule-type thing, where Grantaire is mourning the death of his love, and finds someone with the answer (?) to life, since I think Victor and Sineusov connect well and are both really good with Grantaire. I didn't do much with this, but the painting he's working on is of course Ultima Thule, and the "verse, wildflowers, and foreign currency" is a direct quote from Sineusov's wife.  
> (also I know Enjolras is a bit out of character, but Grantaire as Victor is much easier than Enjolras as Nina, so I did my best, I'm sorry!)


End file.
